"The purpose of these volumes is to publish all the supplications from England and Wales (in other words, from the ecclesiastical provinces of Canterbury and York) in the registers of the penitentiary, beginning with the earliest register and covering all the extant registers until the death of Alexander VI (1503). Where we have noticed supplicants with English names residing outside England and Wales, we have included their supplications, but we cannot claim to have searched systematically or thoroughly for such supplications" -- p. lix.